The overall objective of this research project is the development of mathematical models to describe certain biological phenomena at the molecular level. Current efforts include the development of stochastic models to describe the evolution of transposable elements in finite Mendelian populations, the continued investigation of models used to predict nucleotide substitution rates from restriction enzyme data and nucleotide sequence data, the development of stochastic models which describe the interactions of genetic recombination with DNA repair and normal meiosis at the molecular level, and the development of efficient Monte Carlo methods to study the statistical properties of samples from populations evolving according to the neutral model. Work has also been initiated in the area of computational chemistry.